Clarion

Inner Flight

That pied woodpecker, self-upended there,
on the wire frame of the swinging feeder,
displays the red-daubed tail clinches the case,
above profusion of the celandines.*

But mother is a little tired today,
and she's slumming it, hair up, but straggly,
top-on  but over nighty, dressing-gowned,
be-slippered,  sipping jarred tea through big straw.

I kiss her head; it is my very best thing;
I kiss and kiss and she says, That is nice,"
again, "Thank you for all the head-kisses."
Then I take the boys out for a good walk.

Almond pink above, bluebells down dark bed.
As we pass, staging streets subliming, bright
pavement slabs stately glide to next delight
iron railings frame or fail to contain.

The Panton Arms know us: Oz hat - old boy,
hulking boy, gangly boy. She smiles as pours,
and honored, honor her, silently sweet,
and sit out on patio, off quiet street.

Coat off, soon over-cooled in semi-gale,
but yet the sun, in wind-fussed bush behind
the ornate ironwork, says lullaby -
rest comes to drivers who woke too early.

Loop back  - the Fitzwilliam Museum:
two  hundred years have twisted a few arms,
and Bicentennial has coffins in
by the finest craftsmen in old Egypt.

But first, see where the papyrus puzzle
is spread to the last sliver integrate,
a shape of modern abstract diligence
within which, window of deep reverence,

Isis stands with wings relaxed, bleached nacre,
and ibis hollow calling from the reeds
the dead to guide - a fragment of a page
(no photographs allowed, eyes vigilant).

How so? An outer stone sarcophagus,
within, two nested coffins, mummy case
and mummy in the winding of the cloth:
five hidings to nothing - yet now revealed

the inner lid, such deep mythology;
the heavens, earth, the underworlds, the beings.
I've seen them all in books cropped from this lid;
and did the painter yearn for what he did,

hid for spirits and Gods only to see,
to be given to me, direct source shown?
Or was it sacrilege to scan the bone
disinter the works of such genius?

Look on the inner coffin where the spread
wings of Isis cell -cover the entire
iconic surface - lacquered carpentry,
and know he did believe in inward flight.

Aren't we always flying? And isn't this
Cambridge center all a grand museum?
The sunlight in the ocher stone dreams on;
and the world streams by or stops for a clock

that Hawking inaugurated, time gone.
We hasten back. I have a head to kiss,
a head to miss for six weeks more apart.
We fly on; we fly on, on borrowed wings.

...................

*My older sister's garden. She looks after my mother for a while, then my youngest sister takes up the Ankh.